Childhood Spots

This is the first spot I ever stepped foot on a skateboard. It’s right next to where I grew up and where I went to kindergarten. At first my parents would take me because I was a bit too young (3 years old) but soon after I was able to go there by myself and with friends. The spot is in a big park and since my kindergarten was there, I basically spent my whole childhood in that park, not only skating but playing soccer, running around in the bushes, climbing on roofs where the sprayers used to dispose of their empty spray cans and we would try to find some cans with some paint left and a bunch of other nonsense. It takes me back to when I was a little one every time I’m there. There’s actually a video on YouTube of me, in full protective gear with a Birdhouse complete skateboard, that my dad filmed and edited and my older sister then uploaded for fun. It now has 3.8 Million views which is quite funny. When I went back there the other day to shoot this photo I hadn’t been there in years and the spot changed a little bit, nonetheless I felt the nostalgia and all the memories came back to me.

I grew up in the countryside east of Paris, in a little city called Provins. My parents got divorced in 2008 and my mom left the house to start a jewelry career in Paris. My two older sisters and I had to stay with our father, cause he had more funds to raise us at that time, but we were able to see our mum every two weekends and half of our school holidays in her six square meters flat next to the Louvre. She always tried her best to make us happy. She went to the cinema or exhibitions with us, chilled with us on the roofs of Paris, and brought me to Bercy skatepark. I had tried skating a couple of times before in my fathers basement but at that time, I was more into biking, till the day I saw Khayam, a local from here, skating the ramps. I wanted a board right away and my mum bought me a World Industries complete. I planned to shoot a photo at Bercy skatepark for this article but it just got demolished, to create more space for the Olympics (Since I started there, they rebuilt it a couple of times but it always was this weird, unsafe metallic skatepark. I even heard rumors that a kid died there during Covid, cause he cut himself on the metallic plates). When I got older I left the park and moved to the famous block spot – which is also gone now. At this time the Bloby’s were skating there a lot and my friends and I were trying to do like the older guys. We got more into street skating and filming videos with Augustin Giovannoni, Martin Dolce, Remo Corazza and Marca Barbier. We were skating everywhere, Bercy, Ministry of Finance, Bastille and Hôtel de Ville which is a main spot in Paris but a bit too crowded by tourists. All the clips I know from this spot are only from skaters I really like, such as Soy Panday, Joffrey Morel or Roman Gonzalez, and it was in the Parisii videoseries. It’s now a place at the heart of the Olympics games and also next to my work. It’ll be crowded so I’ll skip skating there for the summer but after that, I’ll skate it again, because of the Olympics they built so much new stuff.

It is difficult to describe in just a few words the significance that “Muvim” has had in my life and in the lives of many of us. It’s always been a place that made me feel at home, from the first time I saw it, before the tags and the waxed curb. I was too shy to skate down with the OG’s and would just watch and learn from above. I felt a very direct connection; I knew it was a place where many of my childhood dreams would come true. In the Muvim, or rather the Muvim plaza, a great community of skaters has been created, where we take care of and support each other. Thanks to filmers like Raul Roig or Roberto Marcelli, who are always willing to pull out their VX1000, what’s been happening at the plaza has been documented. Personally, I am very grateful to all the people who make Muvim such a unique and special place, except for the police (they always come to harass us), although it even had its romantic charm when we had to run to avoid a fine. But now, they just stand there telling us to stop skating. I’m hoping that someday they’ll get tired.